Apple's Leopard still plagued by lengthy bug list

A list of bugs accompanying the latest pre-release build of Apple Inc.'s Leopard operating system appears to have swelled somewhat since the Cupertino-based company last seeded the software to developers in early March.

According to reports already plastered on Apple-related web sites, Mac OS X Leopard (Client) Build 9A410, which was released to thousands of Mac OS X developers this week, still carries with it a laundry list of nearly three dozen known issues.

Of those issues, the most critical appear to affect the system's installation process, Apple's QuickTime digital media software, and graphics corruption with some graphics hardware, the reports state.

The latest Leopard builds also appear to be plagued by printing bugs and glitches in updated versions of the Mac maker's iChat video conference software and PhotoBooth applications.

At the same time, it's reported that a list of approximately 20 "Miscellaneous" bugs spans across a broad range system components, including iCal, iTunes, Safari, Mail and FileVault.

The 5.3-gigabyte Leopard build release this week, unlike the seeds that preceded it, is said to contain only a handful of notable changes, most pertaining to updates to the software's various underlying frameworks.

One application in particular that continues to receive refinements is the Terminal application, according to those reports posted on the Web. However, those changes include only subtle modifications to the software's window settings.

Apple last seeded a pre-release version of Leopard to developers in early March, when it released Mac OS X Leopard (Client) Build 9A377a.

Despite the outstanding issues with Leopard, the growing consensus amongst insiders and industry analysts is that Apple anticipates a release of the software around the time its World Wide Developers Conference rolls around in mid-June.

For its part, Apple has maintained that it will not delay the release of the next-generation OS, but at the same time has yet to reveal or broadly test a number of "top secret" features said to be lingering in builds of the software held down closely at its Cupertino-based headquarters.